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University of Otago

4 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Neuroscience

Organotypic Hippocampal Slice Cultures As a Model to Study Neuroprotection and Invasiveness of Tumor Cells

Urszula Grabiec^*1, Tim Hohmann^*1, Niels Hammer², Faramarz Dehghani¹

¹Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, ²Department of Anatomy, University of Otago

Organotypic hippocampal slice cultures (OHSC) represent an in vitro model that simulates the in vivo situation very well. Here we describe a vibratome-based improved slicing protocol to obtain high quality slices for use in assessing the neuroprotective potential of novel substances or the biological behavior of tumor cells.

Neuroscience

A Time-Efficient Fluorescence Spectroscopy-Based Assay for Evaluating Actin Polymerization Status in Rodent and Human Brain Tissues

Faraz Ahmad¹, Ping Liu¹

¹Department of Anatomy, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Otago

We report a simple, time-efficient and high-throughput fluorescence spectroscopy-based assay for the quantification of actin filaments in ex vivo biological samples from brain tissues of rodents and human subjects.

Biology

Small-Scale Plasma Membrane Preparation for the Analysis of Candida albicans Cdr1-mGFPHis

Golnoush Madani^*1, Erwin Lamping^*1, Hee Ji Lee¹, Masakazu Niimi^1,2, Alok K. Mitra³, Richard D. Cannon¹

¹Sir John Walsh Research Institute, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Otago, ²Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, ³School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland

This article presents a small-scale plasma membrane isolation protocol for the characterization of Candida albicans ABC (ATP-binding cassette) protein Cdr1, overexpressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A protease-cleavable C-terminal mGFPHis double tag with a 16-residue linker between Cdr1 and the tag was designed to facilitate the purification and detergent-screening of Cdr1.

Immunology and Infection

Identifying Caspases and their Motifs that Cleave Proteins During Influenza A Virus Infection

Matloob Husain¹

¹Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago

Influenza A virus (IAV) infection activates the caspases that cleave host and viral proteins, which, in turn, have pro- and antiviral functions. By employing inhibitors, RNA interference, site-directed mutagenesis, and western blotting and RT-qPCR techniques, caspases in infected mammalian cells that cleave host cortactin and histone deacetylases were identified.